A change will be included with Season 7 that alters the behavior of Siphon Drones. We still consider this a work in progress, and are anxious to hear your feedback on the changes once they land on Tribble (no, we don't yet have a date on that).

The new Siphon Drones will work a bit differently, but are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that the owner of these Drones must sacrifice a good deal of their carrier's potential DPS in order to utilize them, and so they need to remain effective without being as explosively powerful as they currently are. They should be easier to counter, as you'll have more time to react to their effects.

Here's the changes as they are currently checked in:

1) Instead of immediately diminishing the target's power by a large %, the drain of each individual Siphon Drone will slowly ramp up to full capacity.

2) This takes 5 seconds to happen, at which point the Drone will have 1 tick of drain at full capacity, and then shut down for 1.5 seconds before starting again. When the drain turns back on, it is again draining at a low rate and has to ramp back up.

3) This "full capacity" drain is still a % of the player's current power pool. Since the % of drain is low while the player has a large pool, and high while the player has a diminished pool, it causes the overall drain to follow a shallow bell curve in effective drain value, during the first cycle. Subsequent cycles will allow targets to partially regenerate their subsystem power at the edges of that curve, enabling more opportunities to activate abilities that may counter the drains.

4) The amount of benefit this drain receives from the owners' Flow Capacitors skill has been reduced, allowing Power Insulators to be more reliably effective. Although the effects of resisting each tick of a Drone's power drain are hard to see, the "floor" threshold of the overall drain is different for players with a high resistance.

We're still looking into potentially limiting the number of drones that a single carrier can field at any point in time, as well as seeing whether or not it becomes necessary to place a stacking limit (hard cap) on the drain itself (mainly for cases where teams of carriers are using these Drones in tandem). For now, the above changes are all that we've actually performed.

Firstly, I dispute that a carrier gives up anything at all to run these pods. Pet DPS you say? LOL, I say.

Secondly, so what if the drain takes a few seconds to ramp up? Oh you've got 50 power to a SS now, instead of 5. You've got 3 seconds now before you're drained again so you better kill all those pets double quick... Obviously this remains to be tested, but that's how it looks to me right now from that post.

Thirdly and finally, as long as the two most effective control units in the game, far outstriping anything a player can lay down, are swarms of pets there is a problem. Pets should be different (and higher across the board) types of DPS and nothing more. Giving them subsystem drains, disables and aceton beam (general control powers) to a level that is greater than a player himself could exert etc was, is and always will be a dumb idea.

Glad to see something being done, all the same. Work in progress and all that

A change will be included with Season 7 that alters the behavior of Siphon Drones. We still consider this a work in progress, and are anxious to hear your feedback on the changes once they land on Tribble (no, we don't yet have a date on that).

The new Siphon Drones will work a bit differently, but are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that the owner of these Drones must sacrifice a good deal of their carrier's potential DPS in order to utilize them, and so they need to remain effective without being as explosively powerful as they currently are. They should be easier to counter, as you'll have more time to react to their effects.

if someone has 9 shield power and cant move, you need half the firepower to get twice the effect, not to mention anyone seen drained down to nothing is gonna get shot at by the rest of the team immediately.

Quote:

Originally Posted by borticuscryptic

Here's the changes as they are currently checked in:

1) Instead of immediately diminishing the target's power by a large %, the drain of each individual Siphon Drone will slowly ramp up to full capacity.

2) This takes 5 seconds to happen, at which point the Drone will have 1 tick of drain at full capacity, and then shut down for 1.5 seconds before starting again. When the drain turns back on, it is again draining at a low rate and has to ramp back up.

good, an oh crap grace period will help. i suggested something similar, instead of a drain every tic, a drain every other tic, or 2 tics so getting snagged by 1 or 2 wouldn't be basicly as bad as getting snagged by 8.

Quote:

Originally Posted by borticuscryptic

3) This "full capacity" drain is still a % of the player's current power pool. Since the % of drain is low while the player has a large pool, and high while the player has a diminished pool, it causes the overall drain to follow a shallow bell curve in effective drain value, during the first cycle. Subsequent cycles will allow targets to partially regenerate their subsystem power at the edges of that curve, enabling more opportunities to activate abilities that may counter the drains.

i think abilities that add power should get about a 3 to 5 second grace period befor they start getting sucked away. at least this in an improvement over say using a battery and seeing nothing happen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by borticuscryptic

4) The amount of benefit this drain receives from the owners' Flow Capacitors skill has been reduced, allowing Power Insulators to be more reliably effective. Although the effects of resisting each tick of a Drone's power drain are hard to see, the "floor" threshold of the overall drain is different for players with a high resistance.

maybe thats why it seemed like insulaters did nothing, your own flow cap canceled it out. also your power transfer rate works agienst you here too im pretty sure. it drains faster and refills faster. high transfer rate should defend agienst the rate of drain, high insulater should defend against the magnitude of drain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by borticuscryptic

We're still looking into potentially limiting the number of drones that a single carrier can field at any point in time, as well as seeing whether or not it becomes necessary to place a stacking limit (hard cap) on the drain itself (mainly for cases where teams of carriers are using these Drones in tandem). For now, the above changes are all that we've actually performed.

the problem is they are too sturdy, and its not hard to launch them faster then they can be destroyed. maybe there needs to be a background preparation cooldown built in for pets, your ship cant fabricate or make them ready faster then this.

you could have 5 fabricated launches per hanger ready, the rate at which you launch them is the same as always, but then when one launches a fabricate cooldown starts to replace it. currently carriers just have an unlimited supply.

with this, a carrier couldn't launch pets at a rate faster then they could be destroyed indefinitely, which is a large part of what makes dealing with all this spam nearly impossible.

Since these drones are technically in the game as Nausicaan technology... Is there any chance that fleet nausicaan ship which on fed side as npc can launch them... Will they potentially get atleast one hangar to use them? I wouldn't mind if its the only thing it could use there but atleast from the way it was changed to be more science to reflect that on that ship. Plus it would settle the issue of the KDF side not having a ship like the armitage in relation to using these.

Anyways the changes sound fine as long as they do what they are meant to do... Based on what you said they will do the same thing it will just require you to make setups that mesh well with their downtime is all.

As far as weapons power with pets they pretty much have no weapons power backing them up you are lucky if a per hits over 250 damage per pulse. I remember back when they actually had dps but people had problems with a KDF player creating around 30 or so pets.

Thanks bort, for your visible presence and your attention to this issue.

I especially like a balance pass on flow caps and power insulators.

I feel like right now you need to put siphons close to somebody and shoot them with the leach for gg, which is too strong. If you dial them back a little, maybe I just add polarons in and again, gg. So dial them back again, now I need Tyken's too. See where I'm going?

While the changes look really good, the Drones are part of the Energy Drain Circle of Life, so if it only takes one more drain stacked on top to get back to current levels we're going to be spinning our wheels. It's going to take more than one pass. We might end up facing the fact that some drains shouldn't stack with each other, or drains should have diminishing returns.